Dr. Gabor Maté ON: Understanding Your Trauma & How to Heal Emotional Wounds to Start Moving On From the Past Today

Published Oct 24, 2022, 7:00 AM

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Today, I talk to Dr. Gabor Maté. A celebrated speaker and bestselling author, Dr. Gabor Maté is highly sought after for his expertise on a range of topics, such as addiction, stress, and childhood development. Dr. Maté has written several bestselling books, including the award-winning In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction; When the Body Says No: The Cost of Hidden Stress; and Scattered Minds: The Origins and Healing of Attention Deficit Disorder. He is also the co-author of Hold On to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers. His works have been published internationally in more than thirty languages.

Dr. Maté generously shares his deep understanding of childhood trauma, vulnerability, grief, and emotional distress. He explains what real trauma is and how time doesn’t necessarily lead to healing, how vulnerability is ingrained in us since we are young and the importance of these formative years to mold our emotional health, and the societal expectations we always try to meet but have never truly given us real fulfillment. We also exchange thoughts on dealing with grief, how we struggle to identify with the people we look up to, and how childhood experience varies for every child even when they are raised in a similar environment.

Trauma is a wound that has not fully healed which can be triggered at any point in our life so it matters that we are able to find a common ground and stay firm in what can give us healing, emotional stability, and happiness.

What We Discuss:

  • 00:00:00 Intro
  • 00:03:12 How do you define trauma?
  • 00:06:32 How is healing defined?
  • 00:08:45 Time itself does not heal emotional wounds
  • 00:11:38 We are all born vulnerable
  • 00:13:55 The inherent expectations we all have
  • 00:20:00 The societal standards we try to live up to
  • 00:25:15 It’s not possible to love kids too much
  • 00:29:35 Grief is essential for life
  • 00:32:19 When the past dominates the present reactions
  • 00:35:16 There is no healthy identification
  • 00:42:11 Why are we set on things staying the same
  • 00:44:38 No two children have the same childhood
  • 00:50:19 The difference between loneliness and being alone
  • 00:53:54 How do you see human nature?
  • 01:02:24 Suffering has to be acknowledged
  • 01:06:27 Getting closure and start moving on
  • 01:10:04 Spirituality becomes commoditized
  • 01:15:56 Dr. Maté on Final Five:

Episode Resources

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Everything in nature grows only where it's vulnerable. So a crustacean animal like a crab inside a hard shall, it can't grow. It has to mold and make itself very vulnerable to be able to grow. A tree doesn't grow where it's hard and thick, does it. It goes where it's soft and green and vulnerable. The vulnerability is absolutely essential for growth, and for vulnerability, you gotta let go of those defenses such as being right. Hey everyone, welcome back to you on Purpose, the number one health podcast in the world. Thanks to each and every one of you that come back every week to listen, learn, and grow. And I am so excited to be talking to you today. I can't believe it. My new book, Eight Rules of Love is out and I cannot wait to share it with you. I am so so excited for you to read this book, for you to listen to this book. I read the audio book. If you haven't got it already, make sure you go to eight Rules of Love dot com. It's dedicated to anyone who's trying to find, keep, or let go of love. So if you've got friends that are dating, broken up, or struggling with love, make sure you grab this book, and I'd love to invite you to come and see me for my global tour Love Rules. Go to j Shedy tour dot com to learn more information about tickets, VIP experiences, and more. I can't wait to see you this year. Now. I know that if you're listening right now, you're here because you want to improve your mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual wellbeing. I know that you're trying to heal from trauma, from stress, from pressure. You're trying to heal challenges you experienced early in childhood or ones that you're going through today. And it's my job, and it's my duty, and it's my honor and joy to introduce you to incredible people that I believe have answers, have insights, have helpful approaches to navigating the challenges all experience. And today's guests is someone I have been so excited to speak to you for a long time on on purpose. I hope this is not just his only time on the show. I hope this starts to become a regular guest on the show. I'm talking about none other than doctor Gabor Mattei, who's a celebrated speaker and best selling author he's highly sought after for his expertise on a range of topics such as addiction, stress, and childhood development. Doctor Matte has written several best selling books, including the award winning in the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, Close Encounters with Addiction When the Body Says No, The Cost of Hidden Stress and Scattered Minds, The Origins and Healing of Attention deficit Disorder. Now today we're talking about his new book called The Myth of Normal Trauma, Illness and Healing in a Toxic Culture, and we have the link to this in the notes. I want you to go and order this book right now. It is going to blow your mind then of this individual about what we're going through as a culture and a society are going to be really powerful. So the book is called The Myth of Normal Trauma, Illness and Healing in a Toxic Culture. Please welcome to the show, doctor Gabor Matte. Thank you so much for being here. Well, it's such a pleasure to be here. Thank you. I love sitting down with people who are deeply immersed and obsessed with ideas and observing human behavior. I admire obsession deeply, in admiration deeply, and I admire the ability to sit with something for a long enough time. But I want to start off broad and I want to move in deeper. And I think this is a question that me and my friends often talk about. I think we hear the word trauma more often these days. Yes, it's thrown around sometimes, sometimes it's used effectively. Sometimes it's used in conversation around things that some people would perceive as small and insignificant. Sometimes it's used to describe life defining things. In your words, how would you describe trauma and why is it so misunderstood even though it's so widespread. It's a deep question because, on the one hand, trauma is sometimes us somewhat loosely and promiscuously to refer to things that are not traumatic. So people will have a difficult experience and say I was traumatized. No, they weren't. Did you say a difficult experience? And there's one of my colleagues points out, all trauma is stressful, but not every stress is traumatic, So sometimes people use the word to refer to difficult experiences, which is not the same as being traumatized. On the other hand, where it really matters, which is in the area of health that you and I are both concerned in whether it's physical or mental health. Trauma is not understood nearly enough or use nearly enough, so that to my mind, a lot of conditions of mind and body are actually very much trauma related without the healing profession, particularly the medical profession, actually recognizing it. So trauma, then is it comes to the Greek word for wounding. Trauma is a wound. It's a psychic wound that leaves a scar. It leaves an imprint in your nervous system and your body, in your psyche, and then shows up in multiple ways that are not helpful to you later on. So it's basic sense, trauma is a psychic wound. And if you look at the nature of a wound, on the one hand, if it's raw and open, it really hurts. So when somebody touches the wound that you sustained a long time ago but it hasn't healed yet, you will react like you're just being tormented all over again. This happens in relationships all the time. On the other hand, a wound scar over, and the scar tissue has certain features. It's very hard, it's rigid, so it's not flexible, so people tend to be rigid when the traumati. It also doesn't grow, so trauma very often stops emotional growth and development. So no, one hand, is very raw and painful. On the other hand, it's even lacks sensation because cartishoot doesn't have nerv a things in it. But trauma, then, just to finish, is not what happened to you. So trauma is not the difficult incidents like trauma's not the war. It's not the in my case, the Second More War when I was born, or what happened to me. Trauma is not the abuse that people experienced. Trauma is not the pain that they felt. Trauma is the wound that they sustained as a result. So the trauma wasn't, for example, the sexual abuse, Trauma was the wound that the person sustained as a result of it been abused. That's the good news, Jay, because if trauma is the wound that be sustained, it can be healed at anytime. If trauma is what happened to me seventy five years ago or seventy eight years ago, it happened, it never not will have happened. You know, the partition of India wounded a lot of people, but it never would It'll never not have happened. But if the wound is what happened to people inside as a result that can be healed, that's probably the best differentiated that I've heard. And you're right, it is good news because it means we can heal it. Exactly, what do you think of the biggest Going the opposite way, we're talking about a wound, and I want to come back to that, but going the opposite way, how would you then define healing, because that's another word like trauma that is also just everywhere now right self healing, healing from this, healing from that. I think healing is such an interesting concept in and of itself, which again is rarely defined or made clear to us, and from your studies, I would love to hear your thoughts in the same way as you did for trauma. Is what is healing? Sure? So you mentioned to me that you spent some time in my homeland of Hungary, where I was born, and the Hungarian word for health actually begins with the word for wholeness, so health literally means wholeness, and the English word for healing and health also come from an aimo Saxon origin, meaning wholeness. So for some reason, languages internationally have intuited the sense of healing, which is a sense of completion and wholeness. Now, what trauma does is it disconnects us. It splits us off from our true self and disconnectcess for our emotions, even from our bodies. So that if that disconnection is the essence of trauma, then the healing is that coming together of the self to become a whole again. And healing is often used synonymously with cure. Fair enough, but strange enough in my view, and not just in my view, people can be cured from an illness without becoming whole without healing. People sometimes also be it could become healed without being cured. So in our sense, healing is not the absence of a physical illness, but it's the integrity of a person who's no longer split up on themselves. I think what we find is that trauma is so, as you said, a wound that is long lasting. It can often be that way. Yeah, but healing is a process that we want to happen now or today or tomorrow. Yeah. I'm intrigued by how does time we've always had time will heal, right, Like that's it won't, yeah, right, So let's go back to the wound and talk about is there any relationship between time and wounds or unhealed wounds, and what is that relationship? How is that wound being formed internally? As you said, trauma is not what happens to you, it's what happens inside of you. That which is happening inside of you. What is happening with that wound over time? When it's left, what happens is that it maybe lie dormant for a long time, and then something occurs that touches it. It's going We talk about people being triggered. For example, something touches wound inside you and you react You've just been wounded for the first time. And certainly I can tell you that's been the case for me, for example, in my marriage relationship. Is that the unhealed wounds. You may think you've gone past them, but then something will happen that touches that wound and you react like you're being tormented all over again for the first time. And time does not automatical heal. Time maybe scars it over time, maybe makes it less available to immediate memory. But should something happen to evoke it, it's going to show up in its full painful impact until you do some work to heal. Time by itself does not heal, not spontaneously, not automatically. How do we covered those? Because I feel that and maybe this is something to address, it's that at least, what I find is that a lot of our beliefs that we have about ourselves and about others are wired to try and make us feel safe to some degree. So I believe, and I'm hypothetically saying this, I believe that I am right in my opinion because that makes me feel safe and secure. But often to unearth a wound, we have to be okay with the vulnerability of saying, well, maybe I'm not right. Maybe this response is coming from some wound that I gained in the past. So, for example, when you were speaking about your marriage, you sparked something for me. I found that a lot of the love I received when I was younger was then followed by guilt. So when I received love when I was younger, the idea was if I couldn't reciprocate with that level of love, I'd be made to feel guilty that I didn't love someone enough, and I found that I would repeat that in my own relationship with my wife, where I would overlove and if she didn't match that level of love, I would then make her feel guilty. And it took me years to really discover that pattern. And that's just one tiny pattern. And whether that's trauma or a difficult experiences a different conversation. But the idea that spotting that pattern only came from me saying, well, maybe I'm wrong, Maybe me wanting to make someone feel guilty is not the right thing. How do we assess that? How do we gain the vulnerability in safety to create that future stability? Does that make sense? Well, it makes absolute sense because vulnerability itself is absolutely essential for growth. So vulnerability of the word itself comes from the Latin word vulnerary to wound, So vulnerability is our capacity to be wounded. Now, the reality is that the human beings were all vulnerable from conception until death. But when we're hurt in childhood and the vulnerability it's too painful to bear. We will try and shut down our vulnerability, and for example, by being right. But if I'm right, then I'm powerful and I can't be assailed anymore, you know. But when we do that, we stop growing. Everything in nature grows only where it's vulnerable. So a crustacean animal like a crab inside a hard shell, it can't grow. It has to mold and make itself very vulnerable to be able to grow. A tree doesn't grow where it's hard and thick, does it. It goes where it's soft and green and vulnerable. So vulnerability is absolutely essential for growth. And for vulnerability, you gotta let go of those defenses such as being right, that you developed as a child in order to protect yourself from the pain. So that's why we talk about growing pains, because vulnerability is necessary for growth. Without vulnerability is no growth. Wow, that what you just said, that's so beautiful. You just said. Vulnerability is our capacity to be wounded. Yeah, that's an I mean, that's an incredible definition of the word. I think we hear so many definitions of vulnerability that vulnerability. I'm just gonna say that again. Everyone write that down. Vulnerability is our capacity to be wounded. How do we develop our capacit? So actually, let's go back to Childoo, we'll come back to that. So if we go to childhood, yeah, what are the things happening currently that you perceive? And I know you talk about this in your new book, The Myth of Normal. By the way, everything we're talking about is in this incredible book, The Myth of Normal, Trauma, Illness and Healing in a Toxic Culture. If you don't have it, please go and order it. Now, what is happening in our childhood in society? I guess when you say things are not happening to us, there are still environmental impacts that are imprinting the potential for this wound to grow. What are some of those things that are distorting our development in unhealthy ways in childhood? There are two things. One is obvious, like when the children are mistreated, maltreated, abused sexually, physically, emotionally, when there's violence in a family or a parent there's caught up in addiction, or where there's a rancor's divorce and a lot of conflict in the home. Children were just wounded the period. But it's more insidious and more ubiquitous than that, because children as certain basic needs. Now, if we understand human, if you want to understand the zebra or a whale, where would you study those creatures in a zoo or an aquarium or a thein nature. The same with human beings. So you have to actually look at what are the evolutionary determined needs of human beings as inculcated are instilled in us through our evolutionary history, and so we evolved with certain needs. They used to be disbelief that children or what are called a tabular russ. You know, an empty slate, you can just write whatever you want on it, program the child in any way you want. That used to be the prevailing belief. It's not the true. Children are born not only your certain needs, but certain inherent expectations. So to give an example, your lungs are an inherent expectation for oxygen because they've developed in response to oxygen. If there'd be no oxygen in the environment, we'd have no lungs. In the same way with the human child, it has certain inherent expectations. And you can own kids not just by maltreating them, but by not meeting those expectations. When I ask the expectation, I don't mean a conscious expectation. I mean an expectation inherent in the organism. So children need unconditional, loving acceptance, by multiple adult caregivers, which is how we evolved in hunter gatherer gros and live that way for millions and hundred thousands of years. Children never need not to have to work to make the relationship with their parents work, so a child children need rest from having to struggle to make the relationship functional. So they don't have to be pretty or cute, or compliant or clever or successful or any of that stuff. They just need to be and they don't have to work at getting their parents to accept them. That's an essential need of the child. When I say essential, I mean if it's not met, that'll destroy child development. The third need is really crucial, and in our society it's hardly ever met, which is the child needs to feed them to experience all the emotions that nature has endowed her or him a day with. So we have certain brain circuits for anger, for love or play or lust or seeking curiosity. All these circuits are there for a reason. We share them with other animals. We share them with bare cups and puppies and little whales, elephant. They need to develop because they're there for a reason. Evolution gave it to us. In our society, parents are often advised and taught to suppress certain emotional experience and a part of the child. That's a wound to the child which distorts their development and has significant implications for health later on. The fourth need fourth essential need is fee play out in nature, free play, spontaneous, creative, imaginative play. But that's essential for healthy brain development. We share them with other animals. Baby elephants play, bear cups play, puppies play, lion cups play crucial for play for brain development. We know that now in our society we put cognitive development way ahead of play and are deprived of children of play by giving them gadgets, which deprives them of imagination. So we're actually undermining their brain development and their healthy unfolding as human beings. So children can be wounded not just by bad things happening to them, but by their needs not being met and our society when you ask about the environmental conditions that undermine health and child development, these amunmental conditions are our society or inimical to healthy human unfoldment. No wonder we have so many children in trouble with anxiety and ADHD and depression, and the rate of childhood suicide is going up, and the number of kids being medicated with heavy duty medications, multiplicity of medications is going up. Why because the conditions for healthy development are less and less available to them. Not because parents don't love their kids, not because they're not trying to do their best, but because of the conditions under which parenting takes place in this society. Yeah, just to share some of those stats that are in the book that doctor Matte is referring to. We have in twenty nineteen more than fifty million Americans, over twenty percent of the US adults suffered an episode of mental illness. Rates of obesity, along with the multiple health risks it possesses, are going up in many countries, in in Canada, Australia, and notably the United States, wherever thirty percent of the adult population reached the criterial And then this part, millions of North American children and the youths are being medicated with stimulants, antidepressants, and even antipsychotic drugs whose long term effects on the developing brain are yet to be established. So you know, you share all these insights and research and work. What I'm interested by is, let's say a child today is raised in that way. I find it fascinating that if you then migrate that child into the real world, and for everyone who's listening, I'm doing my quotation marks like real world. They walk into this conditioned world that we currently have. If we almost raised a village of children in a I don't know what the right word is, but I guess in a more natural way. But then they evolved and had to get a job and work in the world, how would they function? What would be your take on how they would do? I mean, is there any research on the or what would be your thoughts about how they would deal with the then capitalist society that is drilled around results and performance and being beautiful or smart or cute? Would how would they react to that? That question, as you actually has been studied to some degree, and they would not automatically buy into the values. So they may need to get a job, but they wouldn't identify themselves with the job, and they wouldn't judge themselves based on the external values of success. They would also into the world with a sense of purpose. And I know you. Purpose is very important to you, So a sense of purpose can only arise from us differ in touch of their real selves. So they would be in the world, but they wouldn't be of the world in a sense. They wouldn't identify themselves with the values that society would push on them. So I think they would struggle, but they would do reasonably well, and they'd hold them to themselves in the process. They wouldn't live a life that's based on what do other people think about me? Am I pretty enough? Do they find me attractive? Have I collected enough goods and objects to make me feel okay about myself? They wouldn't buy into all that. And to the extent that this has been studied and it has been those people that can be in this society without buying into its values tend to be healthier and more grounded emotionally. The reason why I love hearing that is because it's the first time I've connected these ideas together. That when I was born and raised in London, I was born and raised with all the usual pursuits. I have a good education, a good home, a good financial situation, etc. Those are the ways I was raised. And success was a big part of my culture. Yeah, and I chased the validation of my family and the external surroundings and my community and what my aunts and uncles taught to me, and when that validation was dissatisfied buying or didn't feel like it was actually coming my way. And when I was finally introduced to the monks at eighteen, I then seeked the validation of the monks, only for them to teach me that the issue wasn't who you seek validation from. The issue was seeking validation in the first place. And so what you just said to me is in three years, I got a crash course in what you're saying, where we spent more time in nature, we were trained in unlearning the behaviors and habits that I developed for twenty one years at the time. And then when I came back into the world, the way you just described that is exactly how I felt like. I almost felt like a new person coming back into the same world that I left with a completely different approach and a different map of how to navigate it. And you're spot on. It's still hard. It's not that it's perfect and it's easy, and it's not that I've got it right. It's just that when I am challenged, I have a toolkit or I have some ideas, as you said with purpose. That helped me think about the problem differently. You're not governed by the same thing. So when I went into the world of work, and I just want to give people how a practical example of what doctor Matter is saying is spot on. When I went into the world of work, we were all told that we had to be good at a list of like ten things in order to succeed. And I looked at that list of ten and I was like, I can do one of those things really well, and I'm only going to focus on that one because these other nine are not my nature, They're not my purpose. And it's so strange because that one thing made me extremely successful at the company I worked at and then has become how I've built my career. And it's so true that had I had gone in and done what ninety percent of people did, I would have become one of people were doing. That really deeply resonates what is the difference though with and I can't wait to read some of that research on that. I think that's fascinating when you have a culture where I think most people who read this book today the myth of normal will say that they can relate to having trauma, illness and trying to be on the path of healing. Especially our community here, they are absolutely going to love this book. This is exactly why we have this show. But I find that we would all agree. I think if I asked everyone to put up their hands and say how many people feel they experienced to traumatic environment at home, I think most people would raise their hands. If I asked how many people felt when they were children that they had unhealthy relationships with their parents to some degree, I think most people will put their hand up. The challenge I find is that I really feel what you're saying with the book. There's a difference between what you're saying and then the other extreme, which is molly cuddling. So there's neglect and then there's molly cuddling. And I find that as humans, our brains are wired for extremes. So if we've seen that being mistreated or neglected is really bad for us, we go the opposite way and we go, okay, and now I'm going to make sure that this kid has like twenty four cushions around it. I'd be curious to know. I like to answer that question. This is very important one, but I just want to know anxiety. What you mean by Molly Carling. What I see, and I'm talking about people that I know and people that will speak to me, is that anyone who had a tough childhood are then trying to create a scenario for their child where that child experiences no pain. They're no longer respond to the child needs. They're coming from their own anxieties. Yes, so Molly Carling has got nothing to do with the child. It has to do with the anxieties or their parents. That kid is going to download the anxieties of their parents. So Molly Caudle, kids become very anxious and very scared and very ungrounded in themselves. On the other hand, it's not possible to love kids too much. In fact, there's a very interesting study where they looked at a large number of mothers and their infants very few months, and most mothers in this study were seen as really good mothers, and some were a bit distant and for their own because of their own traumas not as available. In a small group, we're seen as like super loving in how they doodled over their infants. Okay, the thirty years later, they looked at these infants now as adults, the ones that were most emotionally grounded and healthy were the ones who's received the super loving. So there's a difference. You can't love a child too much, which you can. So the molly calling that you describe is not a child being loved too much. It's a child who has to enjoy the anxieties of their parents. And you know, there's a very famous example in world history of someone whose parents wanted to protect him from suffering was the Buddha. He never saw death, he never saw illness, and never saw old age. Until he goes out and sees a dying person, sees a very poor person, a very ill person, a very old person. He realized that there's suffering in the world. So all the molly clodling he received could not ultimately protect him from the awareness of pain and mulnability. Although if I talk about the Buddha, I also have to say that his own trauma is often not talked about because his mother died when he was a week old or right after bird didn't he didn't she So even they try to protect for him, they couldn't, you know. But so anyway, molly clodling has got nothing to do with the needs of the child. Yeah, that's a great differentiated. It has to do with the unmet needs of their parents. And as soon as parents project their needs onto the child, then longer to see the child as they exist. They see their own anxieties, they own their fears and their own fantasies. Naturally, that's going to hurt the child. Yeah, that's such a great differentiated. That's again, it's a trauma response. It's a trauma Yeah, it's a trauma response. Away makes suitcases, bags, and other travel accessories designed to make moving through the world a lot more seamless, so no matter where you're going, you can rely on a ways range of travel products to get you there. Away products come in a variety of colors and sizes that are built to last, with durable, lightweight exteriors that can withstand even the roughest of baggage handlers. Every suitcase comes with an interior organization system that includes a built in compression pad and a hidden and removable laundry bag that separates your dirty clothes. 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How and when should children young adults be exposed to pain in order to develop their vulnerability like, as you said, the capacity to experience a wound, Like how and when do we allow ourselves? How should we What environment is required to allow ourselves to experience pain in a healthy way or is it just going to come anyway. It's the nature of life. But there's no reason to deliberately exposed children to pain because they're going to experience it. The question is hard if we support them and they do you know why, because their puppy is going to die, because grandfather is going to die, because some neighborhood friends won't want to play with them, because they're not going to get the toy they wanted, because some disappointment will happen, you know. So pain is inevitable, but it doesn't have to become traumatic if the child is supported and experiencing the pain and moving past it. So we don't have to impose or bring pain into kids' life to train them. Life's going to do that. The question is how are we to interact with them while they're enduring the pain? Yeah, and what would you say? Those are Obviously there's the love part, which you spoke about. But when when a child is going through something like that, let's talk about loss because I think that's a big one, right, Like whether it's using a parent or losing a puppy as you said, or or even if it's not losing a parent to death, it's losing a parent into a divorce. It's you know, for example, correct, Yeah, it's a grief and loss doesn't have to meet the end of life. It can be everything exactly what or a loss of a country. What are the steps that someone should take in order to help guide through anyone through loss, not just a child. Well endlessly enough, when I talk about these brain circuits that we share with other anim mammals for play and for loving and seeking, we also have a brain circuit for a panic and grief. Whether we have that because life brings loss, and so grief is essential for life, because grief is coming to terms with the fact that something is gone is not going to come back, you know. So I mean a child experiences grief, and you know I said that they need The need of the child is to be able to experience all the emotions. They need to be able to experience their grief as well. And it doesn't matter whether from adult eyes we see that loss as major or minor. It's a question of how is the child experiencing it? And for a small child, even what looks like all losses can be very painful. Well, then we don't make the child wrong for it. We don't say get over it. There's nothing wrong. Think of all the other children who are suffing all that kind of relativistic shaming stuff. You say, Oh, it really hurts, doesn't it. You really wish Grandpa would be here with you, You really wish mom and dad weren't leaving each other. It hurts, you know, you just validate their emotions. By doing so, you help them accept the loss, and you help them move through, and you help them learn that they can endure difficulty emotions without having to become falling to pieces. So we have a circuitry for grief in our brain, for grief in our brains. It needs to be allowed to do its work. I find that a lot of us today are reflecting on that inner child, right, Like that language is again more widespread today or is growing the idea of like, oh, we have this inner child who has this wood or this trauma. What do you find is the difference between analyzing and overanalyzing or thinking and overthinking these experiences? And how would you define the difference? Because I and I'm being very honest and vulnerable because it's the only way to have this conversation. Really, like, I often think about events in my life that happened that would be considered generally as either difficult experiences or as traumatic. Right, they could be seen as either or There are some of them that I've worked through myself or with people that I trust, or with guides, and obviously through my monk life there were things that I looked at and worked on. There are certain things that I don't feel a need like, I don't feel a desire to dive into. The question I'm asking is should I dive into them? Or is that considered overanalyzing and overthinking? And I ask that for everyone else who's listening to this, going gosh, if I talk about everything that happened to me, I could be there for a while. Yeah, what's your take on that? Well, first of all, in my world, there's no should Okay, there's no there are no shoulds, there's no shoudea. So I would never see anybody you should you know, because that itself is intrusive. So the question is whether it's helpful or not to delve into the past depends on what's happening with that individual and if some of the in fact effects of trauma, as we said earlier, is that the wounds of the past keep showing up in the present. So from my point of view, it's not so much about delving into the past and dwelling on the past, but I'm dealing with how the past there's showing up in the present. What a psychologist phenom mine Peter Levinco's the tyranney of the past, where the past dominates my present reactions. It doesn't matter how many times I go back and think about my childhood story. That's not going to help me. What I have to deal with is what's happening to me right now, at this very second, which is a shadow of the past. So thinking about it it's not going to be of much help. What's going to help is to deal with the emotions that are rising now as a result of what happened, and how those emotions affect my life in the present moment. So it's not about the past, it's about the present. Yeah, so's it's really about the choices we have now exactly what's available to us now? Yeah, what's available to us now? Because I feel like we didn't have a choice in the past because we were the too young or exactly too incapable of making a choice exactly, But the choices that happen right now can transform everything. It is possible some people do makes into victims. They kind of identify with the victim role. All this stuff happened to me, and therefore I cannot do such and such, or I'm keeping or I'm hurt and I'll never get over it. It's possible to identify with the victim role. It's even possible to identify with the survival or I'm a survival. Well, now that's not who you are you survive, but who you are as much greater than that particular experience, and who you always as much, always much greater than then you're suffering, you know, And so it is possible for some people to identify with the suffering and the past to such a degree that they stopped moving forward. Yes, I think you've just raised a really important component of all of this on a deeper level, is that what we identify with right Even earlier, you were talking about people who would be raised in this hypothetical village we were talking about, but even through research, they won't identify with the values of a capitalist society. Yeah, identification. You just said people could identify as a victim, They could identify as a survivor what is a healthy identification? Then there isn't one, right, because if you look at again the meaning of words, I just find words fascinating. Same. Yeah. Yeah. Identification comes from a Latin word edam, which means the same and fachara to make as soon as I make myself the same as something like if identify with my role as a doctor, I immediately limit myself. If you identify with your experience as a monk, and I don't mean not to learn from it or to grow from it, but if you identify with it, that's what I am, You've now narrowed yourself. So there's no healthy identification. If identify myself with a state or a nation, I could be loyal to that state or nation. I could love that state or a nation or any group. But if you identify with it such as you have no independent existence, you've limited yourself already. So when you say is there a healthy identification? Not really? Isn't the challenge though, that we're I think all of us are pursuing some sort of identification like that seems to be a massive human need. I support this football club, or I'm a fan of this band, or I'm a member of the this car club, or I go to this shopping grocery store, or like I feel like we're all wanting to be members. Like that seems to be like a human need of wanting to be a member of a community, wanting to identify with something. It is a human need to belong. But can we belong without identifying to the point that we have no independent perspective? You know, you know the words can be be authentic and and I talk a lot about this tension between authenticity being ourselves and attachment, which is belonging. Ideally, we can both be authentic and belong. Yeah, but that kind of nivocation often needs to suffering. I mean, that's what the Buddhists called attachment, isn't it. And let me give you an example. So you mentioned sports team, So in the ninth you wouldn't know this, but in the nineteen fifties, the Hungarian soccer team was the best in the world. We never love that's I didn't. I love soccer and I didn't. Oh no, no. We into Britain and we beat Britain sixty three in Wembley Stadium the first the first time that it was a sorry brit fans. Yeah, sorry, but you know, um, and it was a huge national holiday in Hungary and small country goes to mighty Britain and beats them at their own game, you know. And the next year and the whole country was joyful and they've still in the great memories of my childhood. The next year when the World Championships and we're the heavy favorites because we haven't lost four years, and we meet the Germans in the final and we lose three to two. Yeah, national tragedy. I'm telling you, it still hurts. You know. It's just a football game played on the pitch by twenty two guys in nineteen fifty four. So what you know. But when you when this is over identification, yeah, then that itself being suffering now you know. Yes, you can support your team. In Vancouver, British columber where I live, it's very peaceful place. But the Vancouver Connucs, which is a local hockey team, made it to the Stanley Cup finals and they lost. There were riots in the streets. Why because people are both identified. You can enjoy the team and be a sports fan, but the identification that your joy or satisfaction depends on whether your team loses or wins, well, why it doesn't matter. Yeah, I love that answer for many reasons, because I've had to go through the grief of letting go of past selves, adopting new selves, and then having to realize that none of those were me as my identifications. So, as you rightly said, when I took off the garbs of a monk, when I took off my robes, it was really tough because there was a part of my identity, especially at a young age, that was attached even to the outer covering, and I had to realize that I had extract the inner beliefs and leave the outer covering behind and the outer name and what that meant. And even in my career today, like I've had to let go and even now I don't even know how to identify in one sense whenever I'm sure I'm sure you feel this to some degree in your work as well. It's like whenever they say, like, oh, when you're on TV and they want to put like your your title, and they'll be like, Jay, what's your title? I'm like, I'm more defined by my purpose than my profession, Like you know what I what I do for people and the service I want to offer in the world is far more important to me than author or podcaster or form a monk or like those things don't really define me. Well, I get that totally, I am, But I'm thinking about as you're telling me. When you left those monk's robes, we talked about the crab with the hard shell. To grow, you have to let go the shell at some point. So each of those mal things represent the point of growth, but at the time it's difficult. So when I love family practice to go and work with a highly addicted population in Vancouver, and it was a loss of identity for a while, I was a bit discerented for a few days because all these people, these families that had relied on me to be the kind of the lynchpin of their lynchpin of their health, and all these people that had come to me and trust me and who I would see in the office, and all of a sudden I left that. Now who am I all of a sudden? So I totally understand that now the reality is, but I'm so grateful that I did well. Then I got to experience in the next realm of work helped to further define my purpose in life and taught me so much about myself and human beings. But at the time it was difficult. Letting go of that identification was difficult, and there was really that sense of well, if I'm not that, then what am I? This is what happens when we identify with rules. Yeah. If anyone's listening and wants to go at figuring out what your subconscious answer is, ask one of your friends, ask them and they get them to ask you, who are you? Yeah, and you're answer that question nine episode at the time, when you ask someone who are you, they'll say, I'm an a lawyer, I'm an accountant, I'm a I'm a brit I'm an American, I'm you know. Always the answer is on such a material level. Well, as one spiritual teacher said, I think unless I'm making this up, but I think you said. They said that the problem is not knowing who we are. The problem is thinking that you know who we are. Yeah. Yeah, Yeah. It's incredible, isn't it that the things that are true safety feel unsafe to the mind. Yeah, And I'm intrigued by that because you've studied the mind. You studied addiction, you studied healing, you study trauma. Why is it that we seek certainty and stability when you earlier also said that the only time we experience growth is the opposite when we're vulnerable. Why is it that we're so addicted to things staying the same or things not changing like that seems to be a core human addiction. Well, the vapist one said to me that it has to do with the nature of the mind that you're referring to. A therapist one said to me that if your parents didn't know to hold you, you developed the mind you hold yourself with. So you find safety in this mind that you created. And so the human mind, the ordinary ego human mind is basically a defensive structure. It's in significant ways it's a response to pain. That's not all it is, but in significant ways it's a response to pain. It's a fate of pain, and it's designed to keep you from experiencing pain. So it's worried and it's anxious, and it's defensive. So when it comes to change and vulnerability, the mind wants to defend against it, and so it comes out of fear, which comes out of childhood experience where the pain that you had wasn't held and therefore you developed these mind structures to keep you from experiencing it. And I mean one of them clearly is addiction. And you know Keith Richard's the world's most famous former aroonattic the Rolling Tone Guitars, said about addiction, for example, his hair and use that the contortions you go through just not to be yourself for a few hours. Why would somebody not want to be themselves? Because it hurts so much at some point to be yourself. And then the mind comes in tries to protect you on the pain of being yourself, with its ideas and its beliefs, and its certainties and its endless desires and its artificial needs. And it's our faith to let go. If I let go, I'll be helped his child again. But the mind larges a defensive structure and then often will react that way. That defensive structure obviously it sets us up for so much. What is happening inside that makes two people react completely differently to the same thing. Right, You could have a parent that's it, drug addict, and one of the children goes, I'm never gonna have drugs ever again, because I saw what I did to my parents and the other person actually imitates the behavior and goes down the same path. What have you found or seen that at a young age creates that different journey. Well, first thing to say is that no two children have the same two parents, and no two children have the same childhoods, even though they grew up in the same biological a family, because first of all, one of them came along at a different time, so they had a different set of experiences. Does the birth order that affects our children experience the parents? Then there's degrees of sensitivities, so some people are born more sensitive than others. Sensitive again comes on the Latin words sense here to feel. The more sensitive we are, and the more we feel given the right environment, nourishing support of grounded environment, that sensitive child just becomes an intuitive, a creator and artists, an actor, a leader. But in an environment where there's pain, that sensitive child suffers more pain than a less sensitive one, so we'll have more of a reason to escape from the pain. It's not so much that he imitates the behavior of the adult, is that it takes the same escape root and addictions are always, in my view, at least an escape root from pain. So it has to do with birth order, but found these circumstances degrees of sensitivity. Having said that, the other child who doesn't become an addict hasn't necessarily escaped. They just may have developed different coping mechanisms. They might have become one of these people that are going to make a big success in the world of themselves and they're never going to fail and they have to be the best, and they're going to suffer too. That just might suffer in a different way. That sensitivity you're talking about is probably one of the biggest questions I get asked right now, and I want to ask it to you because I feel or experience could offer some real light on it. I feel people are experiencing so much sensitivity and empathy that they just can't stand the world we live in today. There are people like that, and and I hear this again and again where it's like whether it's the political climate or the economic climate, or their family have addictions or friends like everything that you talk about in the book, and people feel this can't be my home, like this, this is not the place I want to live in. And so, just as you were saying earlier that someone may have the thought, I don't want to be myself or feel like myself for a few hours, people say, well, this doesn't feel like the world I want to live in. I'm sure you've met many people who've felt that way, seen that way, or maybe even talk that way. Haven't met people, let me tell you something worked with you. I had an experience with ketamine a few years ago. This is a katamine training for others, and I was injected with keremine taking me where it was taking me, and all of a sudden, I found myself screaming I hate the world. That was good that it came out of me. So I totally know what you're talking I'm just saying that that person, I personally know what you're talking about. Okay, So here's the thing I think a lot of that has to do with At first, of all, the world is getting more stressed, it's getting more splited. Everybody sees that getting more hostile in a lot of ways, getting more less welcoming and more dangerous, more alienating. On the one hand, and another hand, we're more and more alone with it. Isolation and loneliness are rising. So if people experience pain and change and stress or even danger communally, it's bearable, but when we're alone with it, it becomes less unless bearable. And so one of the major factors driving I think the sensitivity that you're describing it is just how alone people feel, which is not how we're meant to be. So that the capitalist values of aggressive individualist, ruthless greed and competition against everybody else that doesn't reflect human needs or even human nature, not as we evolved, but the world. The more the world gets that way, and the more isolated we become, the more vulnerable we are to be hurt by the world that we live in. And I think that's what people are talking about. Yeah, I think one of the biggest things for me. I was really fortunate that the clients side coach and the people that I work with, I got to experience a lot of individuals who are vulnerable with me, but they experienced being lonely and successful, and lonely success didn't bring happiness. And I know that one thing that me and my wife are always talking about, especially because we're in a country where we don't have any family. We had to start from scratch in our friendship, work and everything. I heard you say in a podcast of how important families do your way. For example, for my wife, it's huge, like her personal family is like everything to her, like that's her greatest value. But here we had to build our family. Yeah, And I think one of the things we constantly do is we try and make a concerted effort in order to cultivate and curate our community in LA. And it's fascinating to me because again, perception comes in where most people say to me, well, LA is a very shallow place, like LA is a very fake place, and also well I found some of my best friends here and incredible human beings. How much does that perception of a place or a space or a person actually also make us more lonely? Because I find sometimes that loneliness is created by perception, Like if we're scared of being vulnerable with someone, it's hard that someone will be vulnerable with us, Right, So what do we need to do in order to build deeper relationships for healing and in this path that you're suggesting, Well, first of all, it occurs to me that longliness is obvious perception. There's a difference being alone and being lonely. Alone is just a fact, and that we can embrace and make decisions about loneliness. It's got an emotional charge to it, and that's very much a matter of perception. You can be alone and not be lonely, and you can be surrounded by all kinds of people and be completely lonely. So that conds how open am I, how vulnerable am I really really willing to be? What defenses have I erected around myself to protect myself that keeps me from really contacting other people. But I think we unwittingly generate loneliness. There's also something else that happens, and you refer to this earlier, you talked about elders. So in our society, we don't talk about elders. We talk about the elderly. It's not the same. In our society that defines me people so much in terms of their economic value. We tend to discarde people that are not perceived as having economic value, either as producers or consumers. So this society generates a lot of loneliness just because it's materialistic values, and then other functioning cultures, elders are not only they're respected, but they're also they have a purpose. They have the wisdom, they have the experience, they have the vision, they have let go of a lot of the attachments that youth invariably engages with, so they have a lot to offer. So loneliness is also created in a society that has a very rigid and limited set of values. Yeah, I love the change in the language again of the elders and the elderly, and it's I always go back to that time in my life because it gave me so much. But growing up around people that were the same age, younger, older, yeah, elder, gave you so many different visions of life. And when I look back at my childhood or my young adulthood, I was constantly surrounded by people that were older than me, younger than me, much older than me, and wiser than me, and being able to have everyone's vantage point. Yes, created a beautiful three sixty degree picture of life. Yes, but most of today we're only seeing one degree. If you spend time with only people your age, you're getting a very limited viewpoint of life, versus if you're spending time with a much wider age range, and you tend to get a much less mature and rounded the view of life. One of the books I helped to write, the Chre what it's called hold onto your kids by parents need to matter more than peers. And the point made in that book is precisely what you just articulated, which is that for so many people, their world begins and ends with their own age group, which is a developmental disaster because again, we've evolved as creatures in touch with multiple all people of multiple ages. Then we've spent our time around people with multiple ages. When you isolate people by age, this culture largely does I mean there's subgoos within subgoos within subcultures, within subcultures in a society all based on very shallow identification with age. It just limits our development and limits our possibilities. And with that development, how do you see human nature? Do you see human nature as muddied trying to become pure or beginning it pure and then getting muddied and then trying to go back. Really, how do you see that? Well, we do happen to have a chapter on human nature in this book. And pondering that same question that Jesus raised, A moor Less comes to the conclusion it's not that there's a definable human nature, not that you can say, because I mean, look, but I was a human being Hitler was a human being. One's full of compassion and love and giving, the other's full of read and aggression and hatred. They're both human being, So how can you talk about it defined human nature? However, what I think we can say confidently that is a certain human potential based on human needs. If those needs are met, development will be healthy and those potential will be realized. If those needs are frustrated, which they severely were in the case of say, ahead there terribly abused child, then what you get is the hatred and the rage and the murderous venom that characterized that personality. Now when you couple that with political power, you see what happens. But that's not human nature. It's just human nature thwarted because the needs of that child were not met in a society that was committely incapable of meeting people's needs, in factfully abused them. So human nature, to me is not a given what we have the human potential based on human needs. Of these needs are satisfied, we can be reasonably confident that people will be connected and generous. Most people want to be kind. I mean, it's interesting in society when somebody those something selfish or greedy, we say that's your human nature. Do we say that when somebody is kind or generous? Yeah? Never. The educator Alphi Corn points that out. And if you ask most people, when did your body feel more at ease when you've experience more peace when you've been kind and generous and giving authentically, not for not of a sense of duty, but because that was just the impulse. Or when you're grasping and greedy, when is there more tension and more discomfort insight? So that should tell us something about our nature, that our nature wants to be aligned with connection and generosity and giving, because our bodies will tell us that that is so true. That is so true. I mean, there is no time in life when you're bitter at someone or angry at someone that makes you feel good insight like it does. Yeah, gut wise too. I'm not just meaning in the heart space, but in all areas of your body, the tension, the stress, the holding, the tightening. But like we were talking about earlier, society set up in a way for false identification and divisive identification, whether it be two sets of soccer fans who now hate each other or rioting, or whether it be you know, political parties or whether it be businesses at war with each other. Right, Like, everything's set up in a way to get you to identify with something in order for you to be against something like that's what naturally ends up happening. Even schools like I went to this school, you went to that school, We competed. Competition seems to be something that has been carefully crafted by capitalist society. And then when you see the rise of and by the way, I love competition, so health competitions great. So I'm not talking bad about competition, but it's interesting to see how again it's so hard to compete without identify fighting as that being your worth yea, and that requires so much mental spiritual strength, in my opinion, to be able to differentiate between identification and attachment. Well, it's really interesting because let's take the example of sports that you just mentioned. What do we call the people who participate in the sports? Do we call them players? What do we call the process that they're engaging? We call it a game, But we don't treat it like players. We don't tweat it like a game because real games and real play, there's no agenda. There's competition in the process and you want to do your best, but in the end it doesn't matter. It was just it's for the process and for the joy of it. That's genuine play. Well, when you think about these multi billion dollars sports industries and the strategy and hype that goes into these are not players, and these are warriors, almost as if their engagements are kind of a battle, and winning and losing becomes everything. And like the famous Vince Lombardi, winning is not the only thing, is the only thing? Well, that's not true, people. That's true for the purposes of playing, as long as you recognize that you're only playing, as long as you don't confuse the game with life itself. But once it becomes a business and becomes cutthroat, that confusion is really prevalent and people take it so seriously. So many let's think about it, like you have these terrible conflicts in the world, like the war in the Ukraine right now, the average person, how much time where they induced to spend thinking about those large issues, or say about climate change that only the blindness of the blind, where the wickedest of the wickedest can at this point deny as a reality. But how much of our life. Do we spend actually pondering and engaging with these larger issues compared with analyzing which quarterbacks should have play in which quarter of which particularly NFL game. You know, so that these so called games and these so called players have assumed a far larger importance in their life, in our lives, whereas the real things we tend to ignore. You've just sparked something for me that I was blown away by this experience. I recently went to Rwanda, and I went there with Ellen DeGeneres, in collaboration with the Dian Fossil Finders, opened up a gorilla sanctuary and a conservation center. Yes, and we went there to trek with the gorillas, learn about gorillas, learn about Rwanda. And I had never been to Rwanda before. I didn't know if I would have visited if it wasn't for her. And the biggest thing I took away, obviously trekking with gorillas and being in nature with a form of life that has no interest in us, but we're totally fascinated by them was an incredible experience, and I'll talk about that separately, but the reason I brought it up here is I also took time to go to the Genocide Memorial Museum, and it was fascinating for me to learn that it's been around twenty years from what I remember. A tenth of the population of the country, so like a million people of like ten million people who died in the genocide were killed in the genocide, and most of the people who lived there today it was their parents, it was their ancestors that did this just twenty years ago, which is not a long time at all. And I met some of the survivors. I sat with them in the museum. I talked to them, We talked to the locals, We talked to people that were helping us with our travel and arrangements and the hotels we stayed at. And it fascinated me that the people were so healed, like there was such a genuine, sincere conversation that they've now let go of this two tribe culture. They've let go of the names, the identification that they're living by. A principal day called Ubuntu. I am because you are I believe, or you are because I am. Like that's I'll get that right, but Ubuntu is the word that they use, and it was so special. I was I was totally I'm curious to ask what did you delve into what allowed them to do that? They said a lot of it came through the leadership. Like they said that that was how they were being It's what you're saying, Like when you said, like they were asked, you're saying, we don't make time to focus on these huge issues because we're too busy wondering which player played in which position. That they didn't say in that way, but that's what they were saying, that our leadership encouraged us to think in this way. And I couldn't believe that in twenty years, when your parents have probably killed their parents, that you were standing next to each other not worrying about the lineage. That this culture was set up. And it was the Europeans who set up part of that anyway, But I just wanted to understand from you, like what does it take to get to that level of healing, because that's you know, people would say, Okay, well it's a ten million population. To me, that's still a humongous win for the world. Yeah. I was wondering if you've seen cultures, if you've seen even smaller groups or even living through the world where you've seen that kind of healing before. I don't know how the healing happened in Rwanda. Yeah, really encouraged to hear what you describe here. I think at the very least of it. The suffering had to be acknowledged and had to be heard and fully acknowledged, and then the healing can take place. Yeah. Without that, it can't, of course, absolutely, which is why it's so important to understand Toronto, the suffering has to be acknowledged. Now in my country Canada, like when you talked about Rwanda, of course, that tribal hatred didn't just arise up from nowhere, nor is it necessarily in the nature of those people to be like that. A lot of it was the legacy of colonism that quite deliberately, and you would know something about British colonism quite it quite deliberately said one group against another. The legacy of rich was often tremendous struggle and hatred and violence. In Canada, as in the United States, the legacy of colonism falls more particularly on our indigenous people, so that to this day they suffer so much. The addiction rate is much here amongst them. Fifty percent of the women in jail in my country are Indigenous people. They make up five percent of the population. Wow, an Indigenous woman like six times the rate or rumor to delotritis. They never used to rumor the deditritis prior to colonization. There's been some apologies in Canadian history, but there's been not sufficient acknowledgement of what actually happened and what continues to happen. I'm saying that an essential condition for that healing would have to be acknowledgment. So the POV came to Canada just maybe weeks ago because the church cooperated with the state to abduct children from their homes, Indigenous children from their homes for over one hundred years into the nineteen nineties, into these residential schools where our Native children manola to see their parents, where their culture was extirpated. They had pin stuck in their tongue if they spoke their tribal language. They were sexually abused, often they died, they were physically abused, they were starved. And the pope came and apologized, and you know what the apology was, I'm so sorry for what some Christians did to your people. Well that's he means well as a person. But that was an apology uttered by an institution, because it wasn't or it should have been uttered by the institution. But they said what some Christians wasn't some Christians. It was the state and it was the church. And what I'm saying is that was a good first step, But until there's full acknowledgement and we're fully willing to hear the suffering of the people that we hurt. And that's why in the swelt steps, whether they do, they do as moral inventory, how did we hurt somebody? And how can we without imposing on them, how can we acknowledge if that's appropriate. So I think for healing, whether for myself or people that I've heard, there has to be acknowledgment. Yeah, the of the suffering itself. I think that's the first essential stuff. The challenge we have though, right in society is that I fully agree with you, but for most people we will never get the apology we deserve because again, we live in an unhealed environment where people are not coming out of the woodwork and saying I'm so sorry for what happened, And even if they do, it's a bad apology or an incomplete apology. Or a tempercent apology. So how do we function in a world where often the closure doesn't come from the person who hurts us or the person who created the wound, or that we receive the wound through and it really comes down to us, Like that's true. Yeah, So I work a lot with indigenous groups in Canada. When I asked me too, and first of all, I often say, well, who the hell am I to offer your device? Because in your traditions there's so much healing wisdom, so that the best advice I can give you the star follow your own traditions. But I often say to them as well, don't wait for the acknowledgement from the government or from society, because it's going to take a long time coming. But you need to acknowledge your own suffering. You need to acknowledge your own pain. And then there's so many rituals. There's so many traditions, the dance and the chanting and the drumming and the sweat lodgers and the sun dancing, and they're going back to the land and the wisdom circles and they and they're sort of justice. There's so much wisdom. So what I'm saying to people is acknowledge and suffering, but to look to the wisdom within to want to healing, and it's there that wisdom to heal is inside cultures, in society, people's and inside individuals or so we both have to acknowledge to suffering and not get stuck on it. Yeah, but then to look for the healing capacity within. Yeah. And you certainly can't wait for the world to It's nice, but you can't wait for it otherwise you're dependent on somebody else for your healing. Yeah. And I feel like when you're healing, most apologies are dissatisfying, like when you're healed or and we'll talk about that what that means. But I feel like when you're more along the process of healing, you can receive an apology, you can receive a vulnerable piece of information from someone who may have you are. But when you're when you're in the thick of the healing process, I find that validation and apologies rarely really feel that good, you know, And I'm saying that for myself. I know that when I've worked, when I've been in the thick of like working really hard in my life or trying to make something happen and someone says, yeah, you're doing great. It doesn't feel like anything because you almost feel missing. You don't feel fully understood. It doesn't make sense. Yeah, and even yeah, they're not quite seeing you. Yeah, and you don't feel seen. I don't feel seen. They've seen some aspect of you. Yeah, but we need to be seen. That's that's a human need. There's a psychotherapist here in California. But the eighth eggar eg Yeah, absolutely, yeah, I know it is. Yeah, so I Edith wasn't the same train, probably or quite likely on the same train to Arshwurst. My grandparents were, along with her family. She's in her nineties now, she describes because they came from the same town in southern Slovakia and northern Hungary. Her parents were killed in our shoots, as were our grandparents. Edith describes in one of her books that she goes back to the Burkhoff, which is in the Bervet and Alps where Hitler lived, to forgive Hitler wow, which is not to say to make it okay what he did, but to release him from the cage that she kept inside her own heart because that limited her. So the forgiveness wasn't. It's okay what you did. The forgiveness was I was going to hold this hatred and it's regemined in me anymore because it's limiting me, you know. So the work really is internal. Where do you see the connections between you talked about the you know, the practices and the healing of the indigenous people, et cetera. How much do you see a connection between spirituality and healing? And where has it gone right and where does it sometimes go wrong? So, first of all, spirituality is one of these words that again gets thrown around, he gets thrown around her. Who knows what somebody means when they talk about it, Yeah, So we can only talk about it in terms of what you mean by it, yeah, and what I mean by it. So, yeah, I liked what you said that there are ancient traditions, yeah, that focus heavily on inner healing. Yeah, and that I'll explain my churn. The challenge I see is that often even these ancient, timeless traditions have now become externalized and institutionalized, so they've lost the purity of the inner healing that's required, and they become commodified, correct, right, Yeah, which is what will happen in a material society. Yeah. I spend time with some Indigenous people earlier this year in a ceremony, but I was struck by is a deep, deep, deep connection with nature. In fact, even the connection is inadequate a word. I'm talking about unity, like they just felt so live. They have a blade of grass, and every tree and the mountain that overlooked our ceremony and the bison that we're in the field. So, for me, spirituality, if it means anything at all, it means to connection to something larger, which is difficult to define and may be different for every person or for every group, but it's something beyond the limited confines of both body and the egoing mind. Now, I think that's our nature as human beings. I can't prove it, but that's my sense, and I think and certain when you talk about the Indigenous traditions, they talk about the medicine wheel, which is the quadrants involve our emotions and our physical bodies, and our social relationships and our spiritual cells. And we have to be sort of grounded in all four of those quadrants to be fully whole. So I think there's something in that spirituality that is really essential to us what that is. I think each person has to discover for themselves if they don't know a tradition that already grounds them in it. Yeah. Yeah, you're reminding me of my time that I spent with some groups in Hawaii and they had a song for the Sun and the sea, and they had a beautiful ritual where when a child is born, the umbilical cord is placed on the earth and then they carve almost like a pattern there to remind the child that this is your connection to the earth. And I always thought that was such a beautiful ritual. I was wondering whether you've seen, or whether you've looked at a tool any aspects of reincarnation or past lives or trauma across lives, or seen any connections or study in that space. I've had people talk to me about their experiences. And there's a rabbi im at once who told me that in ancient times he was a beast in Egypt. Well, it was in no way a lunatic, you know, or a psychotic. He was a big, grounded, lovely man. You know. He was convinced, my mind doesn't go there. I've read something about these traditions you know the Tibetan tradition of the Bardo, and you probably do know a lot more but I do. But I have not personal experienced it, and my mind, as I've experienced my mind so far has fund of space for knowing what that really means. I understand it intellectually, yes, yes, yes, but there's nothing in me resonates with it as far as I can recognize. Now. Maybe at some point I have some huge awakening, or maybe after I died, there'll be a huge joke on me, you know, something you didn't believe very well. Here it is. But frankly, right now, if you ask me, i'd say, nothing in me goes there or even wants to. That's that's my truth. No, I appreciate that. Yeah, no, no, I've I always find it fascinating for people who study trauma, especially when we when you, as you said that you know, no, no child starts at a blank slate. They start with makeup to some degree. And so that's why I was intrigued but talked about it. It's been it's been so beautiful talking to you because I feel like I get to ask you questions that I wouldn't often receive. The answers and the quality of answers, the depth of answers that you can provide. I see you as a true elders, a wise person in our society, and I respect you a lot for that. And well, thanks so much. I can tell you, quite honestly that this is not an energy you like I've ever heard before. Thank you so no, well, thank you, and I hope this is the first of many, and I want to make sure that everyone has been listening and watching. I would love for you to order a copy right now of The Myth of Normal Trauma, Illness and Healing in a toxic culture. We touched on subject matter from within the book. We touched on ideas from within the book. But as you can see, these are my favorite books that you know. It's a it's a it's a it's a real deep study book. Please go grab a copy. I cannot recommend this more. I will be posting from the book as I read more deeply through it as well on my Instagram, so if you want to see my notes or takeaways then they will be there as well. And please please please follow doctor Mattey on Instagram as well. We will put the links in the show notes, follow him, share all the insights that you got from this. If there was something that stood out. I mean, there were so many beautiful descriptions of words, definitions, clarity between ideas that I think have just words that we use every day and we don't know what they mean. So if something stood out to you, tag me and doctor mate on Instagram, on Twitter, on TikTok. Let us know what you've learned and what you've taken away, and I promise you that this will be a great investment this year, doctor Mate. Is there anything that I haven't asked you before? We ask you the final five, which are our fast five questions. Is there anything you'd like to share that I have given you an opportunity to go. I can't think of anything that you even us. I love it. Okay, Well, these are five questions that have to be answered in one word to one sentence maximum, so you have like a very tight like almost think of like Twitter. These are your final five. The first question is what is the best advice you've ever received on healing or trauma? Authenticity? Expand. I'm gonna ask you to expand because I want to hear now be yourself. You know when I was a very confused young man, and I was acting out all over the place. I had an and rself as a very traumatised person. She was an yce You survivor, and she came back weighing eighty pounds. She was an optomologist, and she saw me being an authentic and she quoted. She sent me this passage from Hamlet, that famous phrase, unto yourself, be true, and it follows as night to day that then can't be false to any man. So be true to yourself without going through the details. That poor ant of mind couldn't be twue to herself because as a nature of this culture. But that advice has always stated with me. Yeah, so authenticity has been a major theme in my life. It's amazing. I love that. That's a great answer. Okay. Question number two, what's the worst advice you've ever heard or received around trauma healing? Is it? Okay? If nothing comes up for me? Yeah, if you've never heard any bad advice, that's good. What is something that you once valued that you no longer value? This is almost true what other people think of me? Yeah, I'd be lying if I said, But at the same time, I can do without it so still there, but I'm not attached to it. Yeah. Question number four, how would you define your current purpose in life? My purposes that people are free be from limitations of culture and also the limitations of their own past and of their own minds, and also free politically. So my purposes that people are free. It's beautiful. And fifth and final question, if you could create one law that everyone in the world had to follow, what would it be? One rule, one rule, one law, one principle that everyone in the world had to follow. If I was coercing and creating the impression that one had to do anything that already would defeat its own purpose, because as soon as somebody has to, it's almost like just just lean forward for a minute, would you and put out your hand? Yeah, what do you do? Push on your hands? Resistance usis so as soon as people sense that there's they had to, there's going to be a resistance. So I want to decline answer and everything. That's a great answer. Never had that on the show. I love that answer. That's a brilliant answer. That's fantastic. I love I love the way you think the myth of normal is out right now. Trauma illness and healing in a toxic culture. Doctor Gabor matte Uh, it's been an honor. Thank you so much, it's been so much fun, and we'll do it again. Absolutely. Thank you, thank you, thank you,